According to Patrick Robertson's Film Facts (published in 2001), Charles Perrault's Cinderella holds the record with 103 different film versions "including cartoon. modern, ballet, operatic, pornographic, and parody versions." The earliest known version is the British CINDERELLA AND THE FA...

When I was a younger film buff, I used to get Victor Mature and Robert Mitchum mixed up. I still see some similarity between them (particularly their film noir work), but at least I can tell them apart now.

Ollie, have you tried DVD Aficionado? They have a new, improved search function that lets you search up to four fields at one time. So if you wanted to see, for instance, western films directed by Anthony Mann to be released by MGM/Fox on June 11, 2008, you can enter all that info and have your answ...

All right, who wound up Ken too tight and sent him skittering across the floor like a mad marching toy? You've got him all confused . . . First, he mentions Joe Kennedy, Sr. and his curried favor of the Nazis, and then denies it in his next post. Regardless of his politics, Kennedy liked the Nazis f...

Here's Frederick James Smith's review of THE RIVER (*** out of four) from the Feb. 2, 1929 issue of Liberty . It gives some idea of what's in the missing reels: THE RIVER, coming from the William Fox studios, is an oddity. Its background is a deserted construction camp. Just as winter comes, a shy, ...

COFFEEDAN'S FIRST RULE OF RECORDING MOVIES : If you have even a scintilla of interest in a film, always record it to watch later. If you like it, you've got a treasure you can watch again and again. If it's not to your liking, you can always tape over or pitch it (blank videocassettes and discs are...

I got to see THE RIVER on the big screen with live piano accompaniment by Phil Carli last year at Cinevent (just up the road in Columbus). I had read much about Mary Duncan as a major discovery in the late '20s, but had never seen her in any film which showed her off to good effect. What survives of...

Greetings, Mr. Shepard! Thanks for stopping by! So many of the DVDs in my collection bear your name or that of Film Preservation Associates, I had to post here if for no other reason but to say "thank you" for making so many lost film masterpieces available again! I decided to hang back a ...

I have this on tape, and watched it several times, but not lately -- I'll have to look at it again. This one came out of left field for me. It's the eighth and last film Cagney and Joan Blondell made together. Probably the most somber film they made together, too. What gets me is the ending, which i...

CoffeeDan, I love your Liberty magazine covers, but my poor old eyes aren't what they used to be..Could you explain the new one, I can't seem to figure out who's doing what to who..... Thanks! Nancy Glad to, Nancy. From 1926 to 1932, the covers of Liberty told the story of Lil Morse, who started th...

I'm not holding my breath. Sony and the rest of the industry still have a big job on their hands -- selling the average Joe Moviebuyer on Blu-Ray, and I don't think it's going to take off. The DVD market will probably settle down to the same state as the CD market. Two superior sound media, DVD-A an...

I think the best "score" I ever had was at the last day of a Friends of the Library book sale at Ohio University. I paid $5 for a bag that I could fill up with as many books as I wanted, and one of the books I snagged was a first-edition copy of Weegee's Naked City.

Considering the final match-up, does that mean we can soon divide everybody here into two groups: those who prefer TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and those who prefer THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE?

Inquiring minds want to know . . .

. . .good thing Edith Head hadn't been contracted for this one, she never would've let that jacket, nor the waxy-looking boater that topped it, off the wardrobe trolley. She could when she wanted to. Don't you remember the loud pin-striped suit she designed for Robert Redford in the opening reels o...

A while back, I saw a picture of a cat saying: "You only think I'm cute because I'm not big enough to kill you."